It's been a-long-while since I've posted and my readership has officially dropped to those unlucky few who click on my link by accident on their way over to someone else's blog who actually updates with regularity.
I've had several rounds of in-laws staying with us and several Rosh Hashana related events to attend. Lucky me, these activities involved lots of sitting and lots of eating. Both of which I take very seriously and excel at with greatness.
I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about my baby, who has plans to arrive this December. As much as I like to plan; he doesn't yet understand that OCD can be a good character flaw trait. Therefore, I have no idea when in December he plans to make his arrival. This irks me. How am I supposed to make sure I leave my job two weeks before his birth, thereby ensuring myself one week to clean the house, wash, fold and iron his baby clothes (yes, I know this is insanity at its best, however, humor me please, once he does arrive, his clothes may not even make it through a full dryer session before I hurriedly put them right back on him only to have them spit-up on, peed on or diaper-leaked on again very soon), finish his room, pay extra attention to the dog, catch up on an entire Fall season of Tivo'd shows and have an entire week to rest and relax and think pretty thoughts before I ... go into labor.
You see my dilemma?
I have learned one thing from years of a masked anxiety disorder and 27 years of living on this earth: Whatever I plan is for shit. Nothing will go as I anticipate. I'm having a baby you say, I should roll with the punches? I'll master that one just as soon as I am able to roll over in bed again without the assistance of my husband, three pillows and a host of grunting noises one isn't usually privy to outside of a barnyard.
The dreaded other question looming over my head right now is how long will I have off with my preshus baby before I have to succumb to the horridness of day care and a consumerist mortgage-driven economy and tearfully and heavily sedated-like, go back to work?
That comment right there just ignited fires across the country as stay-at-home-mothers cheered me on for cursing the evil that is leaving your child with someone else in a germ-infested day-care to learn god-knows what and be exposed to the awfuls of the world. And, in another corner, not far away, a happily working-mother just added one point to her tally in assuring that women don't give up their careers and jobs and independence because of a child. I say, fuck you, to both actually.
The truth is, I have no career. I never did. I never wanted to work actually. I just never had a desire to work in a career-type, professional world. It didn't appeal to me. Don't confuse this with wanting to be a lazy-ass bum. I have always had a host of causes I would like to work for and many projects that could busy a person for a lifetime. None of these however involved supporting a CFO, lugging a laptop around downtown-DC in eighty-five degree August heat and humidity, worrying about my benefits and paychecks and when a report was due and those invoices! OhGOD.
I'm here now, a college graduate who has worked as a library assistant, a nanny, an elderly caregiver, an Administrative Assistant and more recently, an Executive Assistant to several CFOs and company presidents. I have learned about library catalogs and procurement processes in the federal, commercial and non-profit sectors, I can edit proposals, prepare and manage spreadsheets, understand and discuss budget periods and government contracts, and how not to violate federal contract law. I can process a company's payroll and solidly converse with the Board of Directors. I can negotiate contracts for meeting space and maintain the benefits for a small company. I can write letters to Congress and get them delivered in a day, create a filing system out of an empty cabinet and blue folders and write a transition plan in the case that a high level executive resigns. I also still ask every visitor if they want a cup of coffee or a glass of water.
In less than ten years of working I have tripled my first salary that I was dreadfully proud to have secured but didn't even cover my rent. Thank-you Mom and Dad. I have created a niche for myself. I have learned skills that compliment my cheerful attitude and I still continue to learn each day. I still don't have a career and I don't care. I never wanted one. Remember?
I have wanted to be a mother since I was, like, nine years old. I have just always known how to hold a baby and change a baby and soothe a baby. There is nothing more rewarding than playing simple games with a toddler and watching them respond to you as their only stimulation in the world. Having the trust of a small child is possibly one of the greatest gifts in this life.
The road of pregnancy does not lead you directly or anywhere near the blissful simple joy of which I speak. Pregnancy is hard. It puts thirty pounds on your already ten-pounds-too-heavy frame. It makes your back sore and your knees and pubic hair disappear into an area you can only assume is where you last left it. It challenges your friendships and makes a stronger marriage (if you are lucky), it tests your ability to save and budget and plan for the future (as if!), and changes the way the world sees you, forever. Pregnancy makes you a parent. It makes it impossible for you to hear a news story about a three-year old rape victim, or watch a protesting mother of an Iraq-war causality dragged out of a Congressional hearing because you can r-e-l-a-t-e and the horror, ohholygod!
Pregnancy does not prepare you for all the changes to your life, it just gives you nine months to adjust and make plans that will inevitably, be broken.
I plan to stop working on December 7th.
I will be a very full 37 weeks pregnant and carrying a very much full-term baby.
That day is eleven weeks from today.
I always thought I would be thrilled to leave my job behind, the two and a half hours-that-too-often-become-a-full-three hour commute each day, the putting up with total bullshit and following orders and staring at one more damn untraceable invoice, but, actually, ...I'm having mixed feelings. I will be moving on to something so much greater and more rewarding than a lifetime of jobs could ever bring, but somehow that doesn't calm the nagging feeling that I've worked for something and this might be the end. I'll be a mother. We all value mothers. Yeah, whine, blah blah blah. But there is something gratifying in putting on a suit each morning and having older men take you seriously and rely on your work to get a job accomplished. There is something satisfying in watching your salary increase.
As prepared as I am to give this up, I didn't expect to feel pangs of ... sadness.
The reality of my world is a mortgage that needs to be paid. My return to work is totally governed by that fact alone, no more, no less. Some days it makes me scream and pull at my hair and cry until I can cry no more and why did we buy this house when we could have moved to the middle of Nebraska and bought a home for like, pennies?
And then yesterday, an old co-worker told me there might be an opening for my kind of job sometime early next year, or rather "right about the time that might work for you" and suddenly the gears in my brain began turning faster and faster daycare ... check, no sleep, but I'll live on caffeine... check, a very different financial situation than I was planning on... check, actually saving money for college not just for next week's groceries... check. Many women go back to work right after popping out a child. Hell! While I was writing this I got a call to reschedule an appointment because my midwife was scheduled to induce someone next Friday. (I thought with a midwife you were of the let nature run its course-school of thought.)
And then, the gears came to a grinding, squeaking, stinky-brake smelling halt as I realized that I am not on the waiting list at any daycare centers, that I don't like caffeine, that I might miss my child's three-month check-up and that is NOT okay, that I do not believe in paying money for formula when I can produce food for my child with my god-given breasts, that I am committed to breast-feeding for a minimum of six months (it would be 12 months it if weren't for that fucking mortgage thing) before considering alternatives and that I want nothing more than to see each moment of my baby's life, that I have spent the last six months dreaming of the Spring mornings that we will walk, him babbling just below my chin in the baby-bjorn carrier, me, with good running shoes on, we'll take Hines with us and go for super long 2-mile walks and watch the new leaves grow on the trees and I'll lose my already 24-pounds of pregnancy weight, and then we'll come home and nap and we'll make dinner and wait for Marc to come home and kiss us both on the forehead and revel in the peaceful joy that is, our family.
And I'll be valued and needed in a way I have never been depended upon before.
And I will forget that I used to feel a little bit more important when I walked around with a blackberry attached to my purse because I will now have a baby attached to my hip.
And I will have become a mother who had a life before she had a baby and who will have a life afterward, it just hasn't been determined yet and it will have to be created along the way.
And I am okay with that.
And maybe I will finally write that book...
i'll do better about reading, i swear! lol
Posted by: b | September 25, 2007 at 05:46 PM